Are Michigan's natural resources all for sale? Next harvest must make sense for economy, environment and society

Mark Copier | The Grand Rapids PressWater wonderland: A kite-boarder rides the Lake Michigan whitecaps off the south beach at South Haven last fall. The Great Lakes are Michigan’s most visible resource. In addition to being important for shipping, the lakes help draw billions of dollars in recreation spending each year.Michigan “is a state that grew up in the belief that abundance is forever,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton in his 1976 book, “Michigan: A History.”

“The copper was inexhaustible, and so was the iron, and so of course was the timber, and it was time for everybody to step up to the Lord’s table and eat his fill, no matter how great his appetite.”

MICHIGAN 10.0

This is the March installment of Michigan 10.0, a series exploring the tough issues facing Michigan's recovery and suggestions on ways to reboot the state. Previous segments looked at Michigan's lagging economy and deteriorating road system.

And join us here Tuesday, March 23, at 11:30 a.m. for a live chat with two experts on the use of Michigan's natural resources: Russ Harding, property rights expert at the Mackinac Center and former director of the Department of Natural Resources, and James Clift, policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council.

When Catton wrote his book to commemorate the U.S. Bicentennial, Michigan’s auto industry was at the height of its world dominance despite some troublesome oil shocks earlier that decade and nominal foreign competition.

West Michigan was on the verge of a golden era in office furniture despite the decline of its residential furniture business one generation earlier.

Now that Michigan’s industrial pillars have waned in the global market, we ask: Can those natural resources on which we began help us rebound?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is often yes.

Economic development specialists, scientists and business leaders say our land, water and wind-swept shores can once again propel us into a prosperous future.

There are still lakes and streams in which to float, swim and fish. There are fields to be tilled and timber to be harvested, they say. There are still minerals to be mined and oil and gas to be discovered.

But this time, no one is using the term “inexhaustible.”

Now the watchword is “sustainablility” packaged with its catch phrase, “triple bottom line.”

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That means any exploitation has to make sense for the economy, the environment and society in general — a far cry from the clear-cutting, strip-mining and open industrial drains of our founding years.

Today’s leaders argue that, handled correctly, competing uses — such as tourism and forests, residential neighborhoods and agricultural uses, water consumption and water conservation — can co-exist peacefully and profitably.

“We’ve got to use our natural resources in sustainable ways,” said Soji Adelaja, director of the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University. “We can’t use an industrial model that eats up those resources.”

A sustainable model will use our natural resources to attract “knowledge workers,” those smart young people who move into a region for its surroundings before they plug in their laptops and find work, Adelaja said.

“They are looking for an active place, where they can have it all,” Adelaja said. Beyond a paycheck, they want places to go camping, bicycling and backpacking, he said.

That appeal to fun-loving homebodies dovetails with Michigan’s rich heritage as a tourism destination.

Tourism in Michigan is a $16.3 billion industry and employs 180,000, according to state estimates. About 60 percent of those dollars are spent by state residents, down from 70 percent in 2007, according to David Lorenz, a spokesman for Travel Michigan.

While state tourism officials believe more out-of-staters are coming to visit, Lorenz said some of the decline is the result of Michigan residents having less disposable income.

A future in farming

If our future prosperity lies in our natural resources, Michigan’s agricultural and forestry industries also have a place at the sustainability table.

“Michigan’s agri-food system represents almost 20 percent of the state’s overall economic engine, making it the second-largest industry in Michigan, and it employs a quarter of the state’s work force,” said Don Koivisto, state department of agriculture director.

In 2007, agriculture in Michigan had a total economic impact of $71.3 billion, up 12 percent from 2006, according to the latest state estimates.

File Photo | The Grand Rapids PressRipening cranberries are almost ready for harvest on Wayne Kiel's West Michigan farm.
The current recession will shrink those numbers, but farm economists argue food production suffers less than manufacturing and tourism during hard times.

More than 1 million jobs out of 4.5 million total jobs are tied to the state’s agri-food and agri-energy sector, according to Wayne Wood, president of the Michigan Farm Bureau.

Still, Michigan can grow even more in food processing, Wood said. Many crops leave the state after they are harvested and before they are table-ready.

“Processing is important. Normally the farmer pays the freight from the field to the processor. That’s money that leaves the state,” said Wood, a Sanilac County dairy farmer who has chaired the farm group since 2000.

Wood argues Michigan’s environmental regulators could be more welcoming to food processors. He points to a recent effort by Ocean Spray to develop a cranberry growing and processing operation in Michigan.

More than a year and a half later, “we still have not been able to get any of these folks permitted to produce cranberries,” Wood said.

Michigan’s agricultural base also is learning what it means to operate in a global marketplace, Wood said.

Several years ago, the state’s apple industry was hurt when cheaper Chinese-grown apples were introduced to the juice market. That competition has since subsided with concerns about the safety of Chinese-grown fruit, he said.

Now, West Michigan’s asparagus harvest is under assault by Peruvian exports, Wood said. Peruvian asparagus was given access to the U.S. market as part of a larger agenda to displace acreage otherwise used to produce coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

File Photo | The Grand Rapids PressNew homes and condominiums in a development in Park Township. Sprawling concerns

Until the current recession, Michigan farmers were enticed to sell their farmland to meet the demand for suburban growth. Farmland preservationists labeled it “urban sprawl.”

In recent years, those pressures have abated as agricultural land prices have held steady while the demand for residential land has fallen.

In West Michigan, the decline has been dramatic. In Kent, Ottawa and Muskegon counties, new home construction in 2009 was down 80 percent from its 2004 levels. Homebuilding starts in Allegan and Kalamazoo counties were down 75 percent.

In the future, Wood said, he hopes land-use planning will allow farmers and suburbanites to live side by side without development pressures.

“We have some very productive soils here in Michigan that have been turned into subdivisions,” Wood said. “On the other hand, we have soils that have gone to farms that should have gone to subdivisions.”

One emerging tool is “purchase of development right” programs that pay farmers for deed restrictions that ban future conversions to non-farm uses.

In Kent County, the so-called PDRs have gotten off to a slow start since they began in 2002. The program had hoped to preserve 25,000 acres by 2013.

Instead, 758 acres have been preserved so far, according to Kendra Wills, a land-use educator who helps oversee the program. “We’re just getting started,” she said.

Not everyone sees the need to protect farmland from housing developers.

Affordable housing will help revive economic growth more than land use restrictions, said Harding, former director of the Department of Environmental Quality in the Engler administration.

Unlike other regions where populations are hemmed in by their surroundings, Michigan’s cities and towns have room to grow, Harding said. “You’re trying to fight what people want.”

Forestry’s comeback

Though Michigan still bears the stigma of a rapacious forestry industry that clear-cut the state 100 years ago, forestry officials say the future is bright for the state’s timberland.

Timber covers 53 percent of Michigan’s landscape, about 19.3 million acres. About 65 percent of those forests are privately owned.

Today, Michigan’s forests are growing more than 21/2 times more wood than is being harvested, timber experts say. Michigan’s surplus growing stock, the largest in the U.S., is opening the door for growth, they say.

But they also say the clear-cutting days that epitomized the lumber era 100 years ago are gone.

“Everything we do is with the thought of sustaining it,” said Tom Barnes, executive director of the Michigan Association of Timbermen. “Obviously, it is in our best interest to harvest and manage the wood properly. Otherwise, we cut ourselves out of a job.”

Michigan’s timber industry also goes far beyond the simple term, “logging.” The forests are now considered renewable sources of “biomass” to fuel power plants.

The state is funding several projects aimed at demonstrating the large-scale viability of biomass for electrical power generation.

“I’ve seen some real shifts in the type of wood fiber products coming out of the woods,” said state Forester Cara Boucher of the Department of Natural Resources.

Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula has one of the world’s best hardwood forests for flooring and furniture, Boucher said.

“We have birdseye maple that’s beautiful for furniture and no one else has the resources we have,” she said.

Despite the timber surplus, the output of Michigan’s forest industry is down because several wood processing facilities have closed in the past decade.

The recession in the auto industry also has curbed the demand for shipping pallets and crates, Boucher said.

Michigan’s timberlands hold great opportunities that are being missed, said Ken Nye, the Michigan Farm Bureau’s horticultural and forestry specialist.

“We can still have all the recreation that forest lands provide and still have the fiber to really grow the industry,” Nye said. Despite the timber industry’s abuses of the past century, “the fact of the matter is that the forest has grown back,” he said.

Nye said he would like to see more education to help landowners understand the value of their timber.

“We have a real growing resource that we are not using as effectively as we could. We have too many forest landowners who are not managing their forests very effectively or to any degree at all.”

AP File PhotoSlant drilling in Michigan.Oil and gas still flowing

Michigan’s oil and gas industry is not seeking a return to its heyday of the mid-20th Century, when wildcatters sunk wells that gushed oil to the surface.

But the industry is still viable, seeking new oil fields and trying to extract more out its existing fields, industry officials say.

Sid Jansma Jr., chairman of Grand Rapids-based Wolverine Oil and Gas, said his family-owned company has been involved in the past four significant “plays” of oil and gas exploration in Michigan.

Jansma, who made headlines five years ago when his company discovered a large oil field in Utah, said he is hoping to find another big play in Michigan.

“Nothing really big has happened in Michigan in the last 13 years,” said Jansma, who was a major player in the discovery of shallow natural gas wells in the northern Lower Peninsula. That play resulted in more than 10,000 wells being drilled.

Emerging technology will be the key to future oil and gas production and discoveries, Jansma said. “We’re always watching it.”

Technology also is driving other new efforts to extract minerals. In the Upper Peninsula, the Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co. was given permission to begin a nickel mining operation despite opposition from environmental groups.

The Marquette County mine will employ about 200 full-time workers when it is completed, company officials said.

Last week, the National Wildlife Federation and three other organizations filed a petition in Washtenaw County Circuit Court asking for a review of the state’s decision to grant the mine a permit. The groups accused state officials of failing to require that Kennecott prove its operations will not harm the environment.

Environmental response

James Clift, policy director for the Michigan Environmental Council (MEC), said most environmental groups believe Michigan’s natural resources can contribute to the state’s future prosperity if used responsibly.

“In our minds, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things and this applies almost across the board,” said Clift, whose Lansing-based coalition of more than 60 environmental groups acts as a watchdog over state environmental and agricultural regulators.

In agriculture, the MEC is a big proponent of efforts to grow and market food locally, Clift said. Efforts to replace chemical fertilizers with natural soil nutrients are favored.

In forestry, the MEC is supportive of “biomass” development but skeptical if those efforts remove hardwoods that should be conserved and allowed to grow so they can be sold for higher values later, Clift said.

Environmentalists also believe manufacturing has to be part of Michigan’s future, Clift said.

But they are looking for clean energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind power and solar-power water heaters.

“We see the potential to harness our own natural resources in terms of the wind and the sun,” he said.

“That’s the big challenge of the future, reducing the environmental footprint of doing everything.”